The Time Has Come for Division I Basketball at MIT

Column by David Berl and Jeremy CohenSports ColumnISTS

Dear President Vest,

Permit me to fancify.

In a school known more for its academics than its epidemics, basketball
is catching. Hordes of eager Engineers have set up camp outside of DuPont
Gymnasium, anxiously awaiting Saturday night's pivotal matchup with Big
East rival Georgetown. The winner of this one heads to the NCAA Tournament,
the loser to the NIT, but either way the old stone campus will rock.

The time has come to bring Division I basketball to MIT. Let's face it -
our campus borders on comatose. Our school spirit has become Jack Daniels
on a test night. Never in the last five years have students banded together
to protest anything more than the granularity of the grading system. The
closest thing we have had to a sit-down strike is the nightly gathering of
120 squatters in the computer cluster in the fifth floor of the Student
Center. Previous generations had Vietnam, Muhammed Ali, and disco music.
Just give us basketball.

Certainly bringing high-caliber basketball players to the Institute
could compromise our academic integrity. It is rare to find a
student-athlete who is superb in both respects. Nonetheless, schools like
Stanford, Northwestern, and Duke have managed to be competitive on the
basketball court and in U.S. News and World Report, so a precedent
for the maintenance of high athletic and academic standards does exist. A
high-profile basketball program could work wonders for MIT, bringing fame
and fortune to the south of Cambridge.

The potential revenues generated by a premier college basketball team
are mind-boggling. Including ticket sales, concessions, television
broadcasts, athletic apparel endorsements, and conference kickbacks, the
Institute would stand to reap millions of dollars, money that can be
directly funneled into research, scholarships, and a well-deserved raise
for the president (it couldn't hurt). Nike, Reebok, and Fila would all love
to claim that the smartest students in the world wear their shoes. Champion
could start a "Not Just for Jocks" campaign featuring super-nerd and former
Provost Mark S. Wrighton in a hooded sweatshirt and kneepads. MIT will
never again be confused with the Montana Institute of Trucking.

As hard as it is to believe, the caliber of student applying to MIT will
actually improve. Countless outstanding students every year choose not to
attend MIT, not because our academics are lacking, but because our public
image is downright woeful. MIT is perceived as a bastion of bitterness,
where hacking and computer games are the only escape from mathematical
oppression. We are the acme of acne and that needs to change.

Major college athletics will give us a chance to showcase MIT as a
school that "works hard and plays hard," where good times and good grades
don't have to be mutually exclusive. Just as Boston College doubled its
applicants the year after Doug Flutie won the Heisman Trophy so too will we
be deluged by the high-school elite if our public persona receives a
promotion.

To make it happen, we have to convince the players to play here. No
small task indeed. First off, we need to shed the nickname "Engineers."
Somehow having a giant Dilbert mascot waving a slide rule madly about
doesn't conjure up images of greatness nor strike fear into an opponent's
heart.

Our suggestion would be to use the natural alternative "Beavers"; it's
simple, it's unique, and every high school male from Albany to Albuquerque
will ditch his South Carolina "Cocks" hat for ours. We'll also need a
slogan much like "The Ramblin' Wreck of Georgia Tech." Our choice is "The
Geeks-to-Be of MIT," but we're flexible on this one. Can't you just hear
the tympanic tonsils of Dick Vitale screaming in jubilation, "It's geek
city, baybeee!"

We'll also need a first-class arena, a long-overdue extension of campus.
We will probably have to look to our friends at DuPont for assistance, but
this is an investment that will pay off in the long run. If students are
allowed to sit at courtside as the Cameron Crazies do at Duke, the Dean
Dome will succumb to the Beaver Dam in discussions of "home-field
advantage," and the fans will flock here. We can put on a technical show
like no other school on Earth, this will give us the forum to do so.

Boston is the greatest college city in the world - if the scholarships
come, so will the great players. MIT has an international recruiting base
superior to any university anywhere, and basketball is rapidly rising to
meet soccer in international popularity. Well-established, successful
professional leagues exist in Israel, Greece, and Turkey just to name a
few.

We will have a recruiting niche carved by no other institution - we will
appeal globally to the outstanding athlete who also desires an outstanding
technical education. Not every jock is a jerk. There have been a segment of
NBA players capable of handling the academic rigors of MIT; David Robinson
scored over 1300 on his SAT, Chris Dudley attended Yale, and Bill Bradley
was a Rhodes Scholar at Princeton. If we bait the hook with scholarships,
style, and a degree from the best technical school in the history of
mankind, the big fish - the seven-foot tall ones with tomahawk jams and
outside jumpers - will bite.

We have the unique opportunity to build a tradition that will wake our
school from its social hibernation and make the bed of the Charles River a
hotbed of basketball hysteria. President Vest, the ball is in your court.
Geeks of the world, unite.